Twenty Two Hearts
by Naughty Captain Crieff
Summary: When you've had twenty two hearts, how do you separate your past and present? The Doctor and River Song meet again and the Doctor finds himself reflecting on his relationship with her and reluctantly talking of his past love, Rose Tyler. Re-post.


**A/N: I wrote this well before Let's Kill Hitler so any uncertainty in the Doctor is due to me simply not knowing how they turned out! So let's say this is set between A Good Man Goes to War and Let's Kill Hitler I am just re- uploading from another account which I got rid of. **

**It's one shot with no real plot, it's like therapy…. For myself. It's kinda my way of letting myself get over Rose, and help myself come to understand the complications of a time lord and River Song. It might help you too if you read it! It was done very quickly and is unbeta'd so excuse any mistakes.**

A gentle orange light shone around the bedroom, casting a sunset like glow upon the only piece of furniture in the room, the bed. Not bunk beds either, but a double, circular bed with shimmering green covers, embroidered with silver symbols of an unreadable, long lost language. The language of Gallifrey. Tangled within these sheets were two figures, a time lord and his…. wife? Well that was left to be said.

Sweeping a mass of unruly hair from his eyes, the Doctor cast his glance from the high arched roof of the TARDIS to the resting woman whose head lay on his chest. He couldn't see her face from beneath a wild nest of light brown curls but she was still and her chest moved slowly with even breathing, so he assumed her to be peacefully asleep. The Doctor thought he had never known River Song to be quite as quiet as she was right then.

Usually he would find himself fighting against a torrent of mocking and laughter, all done out of affection she claimed, or having to listen to her superior knowledge of his own ship. River was a handful, of that there was no doubt, and yet he much preferred her awake; the Doctor's favourite kind of companion was one with a little bite. But could he even call her a companion? There meetings were so intermittent and never had he bedded a companion before… at least not in the TARDIS.

The event leading up to this particular encounter had of course begun with a strange planet- this time it had been an inhospitable place made of glittering diamonds (much like Midnight, the Doctor mused)- suffering from an alien threat- horrible creatures with a few too many tentacles and no manners whatsoever, they were _eating_ the human inhabitants whole- and the Doctor saving the day from this threat. Not without the help of a few unlikely heroes though. In her usual fashion, River appeared from nowhere, just walked out of her storm cage, and pulled the Doctor from the brink of disaster with a winning smile. He had asked her how she wished to be thanked, a nice trip maybe, but her reply was so disgustingly human that the Doctor had no time to react before she was kissing him.

Reluctance soon subsided to curiosity as the Doctor found that River knew his body better than the back of her own hand, leading him to believe that this was not the last time he would spend time with her in such a fashion. Soon they were in each other's arms, having given into those horrible primal urges, panting in the Doctor's own bed.

"Well," the Doctor had sighed uncomfortably, "I can't imagine that's your first time doing that with me?"

River had stiffened in the Doctor's arms- _your first my last_- he thought he heard her mutter but louder she said, "Oh wouldn't you like to know, sweetie."

And then she had drifted to sleep; leaving the Doctor to worry to himself about how his time with her seemed to stretch far into his future, but her time with him was drawing to a close. And all he could think was how unfair it all was. It was not in the Doctor's nature to sulk, but he allowed it this once.

After too long alone with his thoughts, River stirred at his chest, and after a moment of stretching, spoke.

"Tell me about your adventures." She murmured sleepily.

"Hello to you too."

"Hello sweetie." She sighed but then with more determination continued, "I love to hear about your past. So complicated. I guess you wouldn't know, but this is what we always do. Just talk."

"Haven't I already told you everything?" the question sounded rhetorical but it wasn't, because he really didn't know.

"Yes, almost. Almost everything. You've told me about everyone. All but one that is."

"Oh yes? Who are you missing from your collection?"

"Rose Tyler."

There was silence at this for a long drawn out moment in which all could be heard was the soft hum of the TARDIS, which provided the backing track to all of the Doctor's silent moments.

"I don't know if I should…" he started but was cut off by River's huff.

She leant up on her elbow so her eyes were level with his and said, "I know that you…" she hesitated, not knowing exactly where the Doctor's feelings stood, "loved her. It doesn't bother me; we've all had past loves. I want to know."

"I don't know…" the Doctor mumbled, failing to add that River had yet to meet his Tenth regeneration and that when she did, he wouldn't love her. Not one bit. He would be consumed with thoughts of Rose Tyler and she wouldn't want that thought when they finally parted ways.

"I've heard about all the other girls; Martha, Donna, Sarah Jane, Polly, Jo, Ace, Charley, Nyssa, Grace, Zoe…"

"Stop!" he cut her off with a bark wrenched from the darkest parts of him, forceful enough that River sat up and scooted away from him, hands clutching the sheet about her chest.

Following suit he pulled himself up and sighed mournfully before saying, "They break my heart. Every single one of them. All so fragile and so _so_ human. None can stay with me forever even though I loved- still love- them all. Not in the way I love… loved Rose. But love all the same."

The Doctor ran his hands down his face and River could almost see him wipe away any façade of youth that remained, every line of adventure and pain seemed to set even deeper into his ancient features, "I love them. I loved them. I will love them. Past, present and future. It doesn't cover it. On Gallifrey we had more tenses . How do you go about explaining things with you linear little languages? We have regenerations and…."

River raised a finger and pressed it against his lips softly to silence the rant. She smiled sadly at his attempts to lead her off course.

"They all have to leave. And it hurts." River finished for him; because of course she must have experienced this to an extent.

After a silence, where the Doctor and River couldn't help but feel a little sorry for themselves, the Doctor unexpectedly began to talk, "When I think of her." _More often than I would like to admit_, "all of the emotions are still there. The hurt is still there but I can't connect to it…."

His brow creased in a strain to explain how horrendously the emotions of his past regenerations affected him. They could make him wiser and stronger but all too often they were heavy, they weighed him down and confused his logic.

"When I look back on my time with Rose, the love for that girl is still there, in my subconscious, but it's as if…"

"As if that love belongs to someone else?"

"Exactly!" the Doctor sprang up, resting on his knees "The part of my mind that is still my tenth regeneration stores all of these feelings for people I don't really know anymore. All of my regenerations do this. They're my emotions, but they don't connect to my entire being."

At this he flopped down onto the bed with an exasperated huff. The inner workings of a time lord were an impossible thing. He had two hearts, one might state clinically, but sometimes it felt as if he had twenty-two hearts. Each pair beating a different rhythm from another. Each loving a different person.

He was the Doctor, but he wasn't Rose Tyler's Doctor. Not anymore.

"I am the Doctor." He stated, reaffirming that truth more for himself than River, "And I still believe in the same things. My _mind_, the fundamentals, remains the same but my heart, the surface of me, is new. And it is _confusing, _River."

Rassilon clearly never factored in the complexity of love when he gave his people the curse of near immortality.

"I understand." River said quietly, moving to mould herself into his side.

He looked at her expectantly, expecting a tale of a past love, but she just grinned sheepishly and breathed into his ear, "Spoilers sweetie."

The idea that they might meet again when she was in love with another made acid bubble in his throat, but his face remained passive. Because this is how they had to be.

Their story was painfully complicated, and bitterly tragic. For the most part, the more he knew her, the less she knew him. And vice versa. He wondered when they would meet in the middle, as equals.

"So, the adventures of Doctor Ten and Rose Tyler?" River smiled.

"Ten and Nine. My first companion after the Time War." The Doctor corrected, "Where should I start?"

"Somewhere familiar. The Daleks."

"How did you know we came across the Daleks?"

"Because you always do."

They talked for hours, the Doctor explaining every detail of his heroic deeds with the help of Rose Tyler (and Mickey and Jackie and Jack). He went from their first meeting on Earth to his regeneration and the Sycorax on Christmas, all the way past onto losing Rose in a parallel universe. He even explained of where he left the human Doctor. Happily, in love, with Rose Tyler. She sighed sweetly when he mentioned it, saying she was glad the girl could have _her_ Doctor.

When the tale was done, River readied herself to leave.

"Where do you want to go next time we meet?" The Doctor asked after they parked alongside her storm cage.

"What does it matter if I tell you? The next time you see me won't be my next time."

"It'll be nice knowing where you're going next for once."

"Well, there is one place I always wanted to visit, but you keep putting it off!"

"Oh yes, where's that then?"

"To Darillium. To see the singing towers."

Kissing him softly, she stepped from the TARDIS with a grin, leaving him breathless. But not for the reason she assumed.


End file.
